rake

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A long-handled implement with a row of projecting teeth at its head, used especially to gather leaves or to loosen or smooth earth.

n. A device that resembles such an implement.

transitive v. To gather or move with or as if with a rake: rake leaves; rake in the gambling chips.

transitive v. To smooth, scrape, or loosen with a rake or similar implement: rake the soil for planting.

transitive v. Informal To gain in abundance. Often used with in: a successful company that raked in the profits.

transitive v. To search or examine thoroughly; ransack.

transitive v. To scrape; scratch.

transitive v. To aim heavy gunfire along the length of.

intransitive v. To use a rake.

intransitive v. To conduct a thorough search: raked through the files for the misplaced letter.

rake up To revive or bring to light; uncover: rake up old gossip.

idiom rake over the coals To reprimand severely.

n. An immoral or dissolute person; a libertine.

transitive v. To slant or cause to incline from the perpendicular: propeller blades that rake backward from the shaft; rake a ship's mast.

n. Inclination from the perpendicular: the rake of a jet plane's wings.

n. The angle between the cutting edge of a tool and a plane perpendicular to the working surface to which the tool is applied.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. A garden tool with a row of pointed teeth fixed to a long handle, used for collecting grass or debris, or for loosening soil.

n. a lot, plenty.

n. the direction of slip during fault movement. The rake is measured within the fault plane.

n. the sloped edge of a roof at or adjacent to the first or last rafter.

n. a set of coupled rail vehicles, normally coaches or wagons.

n. A puffer that emits a stream of spaceships rather than a trail of debris.

n. The scaled commission fee taken by a cardroom operating a poker game.

v. To use a rake on (leaves, debris, soil, a lawn, etc) in order to loosen, gather together, or remove debris from.

v. To search thoroughly.

v. To spray with gunfire.

v. To claw at; to scratch.

v. To gather, especially quickly (often as rake in)

n. A man habituated to immoral conduct.

v. To walk about; to gad or ramble idly.

v. To act the rake; to lead a dissolute, debauched life.

n. a course; direction; stretch.

n. a range, stray.

v. To run or rove.

v. To proceed rapidly; to move swiftly.

v. To guide; to direct

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. An implement consisting of a headpiece having teeth, and a long handle at right angles to it, -- used for collecting hay, or other light things which are spread over a large surface, or for breaking and smoothing the earth.

n. A toothed machine drawn by a horse, -- used for collecting hay or grain; a horserake.

n. A fissure or mineral vein traversing the strata vertically, or nearly so; -- called also rake-vein.

n. The inclination of anything from a perpendicular direction

n. A loose, disorderly, vicious man; a person addicted to lewdness and other scandalous vices; a debauchee; a roué.

intransitive v. To use a rake, as for searching or for collecting; to scrape; to search minutely.

intransitive v. To pass with violence or rapidity; to scrape along.

intransitive v. To incline from a perpendicular direction.

intransitive v. To walk about; to gad or ramble idly.

intransitive v. To act the rake; to lead a dissolute, debauched life.

transitive v. To collect with a rake; ; -- often with up.

transitive v. To collect or draw together with laborious industry; to gather from a wide space; to scrape together

transitive v. To pass a rake over; to scrape or scratch with a rake for the purpose of collecting and clearing off something, or for stirring up the soil

transitive v. To search through; to scour; to ransack.

transitive v. To scrape or scratch across; to pass over quickly and lightly, as a rake does.

transitive v. To enfilade; to fire in a direction with the length of; in naval engagements, to cannonade, as a ship, on the stern or head so that the balls range the whole length of the deck.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

To gather, clear, smooth, or stir with or as if with a rake; treat with a rake, or something that serves the same purpose: as, to rake up hay; to rake a bed in a garden; to rake the fire with a poker or raker.

To collect as if by the use of a rake; gather assiduously or laboriously; draw or scrape together, up, or in.

To make minute search in, as if with a rake; look over or through carefully; ransack: as, to rake all history for examples.

To pass along with or as if with a scraping motion; impinge lightly upon in moving; hence, to pass over swiftly; scour.

Milit., to fire upon, as a ship, so that the shot will pass lengthwise along the deck; fire in the direction of the length of, as a file of soldiers or a parapet; enfilade.

To cover with earth raked together; bury. See to rake up, below.

To draw from oblivion or obscurity, as something forgotten or abandoned; bring to renewed attention; resuscitate; revive: used in a more or less opprobrious sense: as, to rake up a forgotten quarrel.

To use a rake; work with a rake, especially in drawing together hay or grain.

To make search with or as if with a rake; seek diligently for something; pry; peer here and there.

To take a course; move; go; proceed.

In hunting:

Of a hawk, to range wildly; fly wide of the game.

Of a dog, to follow a wrong course. See the quotation.

To incline from the perpendicular or the horizontal, as the mast, stem, or stern of a ship, the rafters of a roof, the end of a tool, etc. See the noun.

To give a rake to; cause to incline or slope.

To play the part of a rake; lead a dissolute, debauched life; practise lewdness.

In turpentining, to clear combustible material away from (the base of a tree), as a precaution against fire.

In salt-making, to remove the salt from (the evaporating-pans) to the draining-table.

n. An implement of wood or iron, or partly of both, with teeth or tines for drawing or scraping things together, evening a surface of loose materials, etc.

n. An instrument of similar form and use with a blade instead of teeth, either entire, as a gamblers' or a maltsters' rake, or notched so as to form teeth, as a furriers' rake. See the quotations.

n. A course, way, road, or path.

n. Inclination or slope away from a perpendicular or a horizontal line.

n. In coal-mining, a series of thin layers of ironstone lying so near each other that they can all be worked together.

n. An idle, dissolute person; one who goes about in search of vicious pleasure; a libertine; an idle person of fashion.

n. A lean, meager person.

n. A local miners' term in Derbyshire, England, for veins of galena in joints in limestone, as contrasted with fault-fissures. The joints are often enlarged by the solution and removal of the walls, but they may be and usually are limited or cut off sharply by an underlying stratum. Also written rake-vein. Compare gash-vein.

Examples

But by the next harvest I had it so constructed, as to be drawn by an iron bar so shaped, appended and supported on the underneath part of the carriage, as to admit of the machine turning in any direction, and the carriage would follow just as the two hind wheels of a wagon do; the carriage had a seat behind, and a thick, deep cushion in front, for the raker to press his knees against while removing the grain from the platform to his right hand, which he was enabled to do with apparent ease with a _rake of peculiar shape_; -- (it cannot be done with a rake of ordinary shape).

Having mentioned the word rake, I must say a word or two more on that subject, because young people too frequently, and always fatally, are apt to mistake that character for that of a man of pleasure; whereas, there are not in the world two characters more different.